Structure-borne noise at PWM excitation using an extended field reconstruction method and modal decomposition

Abstract

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) represents a carrier-frequency-dependent structural excitation. The PWM’s excitation harmonics are also reflected in the air gap’s electromagnetic forces, the vibration response and the resulting structure-borne noise. The last of these can be numerically predicted with a multiphysics finite element analysis (FEA) containing electronic, electromagnetic, mechanical and acoustic field problems. The multiphysics FEA are precise, but computationally inefficient and consequently inadequate for parametric studies. This paper introduces a method for a fast structure-borne noise prediction at PWM excitation. The presented approach contains the Extended field reconstruction method (EFRM) to handle the magnetic saturation and slotting effects in magnetics, and the modal decomposition to couple the electromagnetic and mechanical domains. Finally, the structure-borne sound power level is calculated via the vibration-velocity response. Indeed, this approach demands a pre-calculation of the basis functions and modal parameters from the FEA, but afterwards the effect of the different PWM excitation cases can be evaluated in a few seconds. The proposed method can calculate the structure-borne noise at PWM excitation accurately and is more than 104 times faster than the conventional multiphysics FEA approach.